


Hunt down the Wind

by Drachenkinder



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Modern Era, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 12:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16765222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drachenkinder/pseuds/Drachenkinder
Summary: For @darklittlestories Solstice Groove prompts. I chose “hunt"





	Hunt down the Wind

It was November, the night of the new moon, and almost midnight. He’d been walking for close to an hour and his eyes had grown accustomed to the starlight as he made his way down the dirt road.

There was nothing special in his appearance. He neither tall nor short, young nor old, handsome nor ugly. He would fade into a crowd without trying, his name forgotten a moment after introductions.

His life was as plain as his looks, a quiet routine of work and rest and a few innocuous hobbies to fill his free time. He liked to read, history and travel logs and the inevitable for a man of quiet temperament but hidden longing, adventure stories.

Lately however his reading material had become esoteric. It started with a coincidental convergence of a history of Scandinavia that detailed the native religions and an adventure story that contained an unexpected element of fantasy.

His curiosity aroused he started researching the Norse and Germanic gods and other supernatural characters.

This unprepossessing start kindled a spiritual hunger unknown to his practical life. Religion had been a matter of expectation and form. As child he’d attended church in the same manner and with the same lack of enthusiasm as he did homework or household chores. As an adult he enjoyed the pageantry of the major holidays without feeling any connection to the dogma.

But there was something in these ancient tales and beliefs that called to him. These earthier gods with their human foibles seemed closer, more reachable. Unexpectedly or perhaps inevitably it was the elements of chaos and unpredictability that attracted him the most. He who lived a life of placid comfort, longed for the wildfire of chaos.

Which was why he was walking down the deserted road that had become a path and was fast turning into a maze of game trails. A perfect offering to chaos and darkness and the spirits of the wild.

It was cold and the wind had picked up. The jacket that was warm enough when he left his car was now too light to stand up to the increasing chill. He’d been praying, cajoling, even daring as he walked with no result. Wanting to believe more than actually believing, else why would he be here doing the very thing warned against?

The path had disappeared under a copse of trees. The wind was harsher and the nearly bare trees offered little shelter. Leaves swirled like fluttering bats, brushing against his pants and jacket, and striking his face damp and cold. He stumbled in the greater dark under the trees.

“This is stupid, you are going to end up with a broken leg.” The practical part of his mind said. “The further you walk, the further you will have to walk back.”

But the leaves whirled in the rising wind and whispered, “Dance with us.”

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/28806674@N08/46094116291)

He banished practical, banished sensible, and banished the comfortable thing to do. He raised his arms and twirled with the leaves.

The wind ruffled his hair like a caress and the bare branches rustled like soft clapping. He laughed and let the wind push him where it would. He followed the leaves up a wooded slope where the trees clustered thicker and taller than their valley siblings. Dancing, almost running as he went. He heard a far off howling and barking. Dogs on a distant farm or the yapping of foxes, he could tell neither direction nor distance in the wood.

His breath was quicker, the cold wind more urgent, and at the edge of vision shapes flitted in the dark. Running silent between the tree trunks, dogs? Wolves? Or only a trick of the uncertain starlight. They were lost in the shadows of the wind tossed trees when he turned his head for a closer look. He ran with them anyway, his heart pounding in elation not fear. His shouted laughter echoed in the howling wind.

The shadows moved closer, darting across his path, turning him guiding him as he ran. Black and wolfish with a heavy rank smell of rotting leaves and wet animal fur and human sweat commingled.

He was panting out his breath in harsh barks and still he ran, they ran. The wind keened overhead with the shrill sound of hunting horns, plaintive and calling.

Hoof beats paced his running feet, and he heard the heavy blowing of horses. He breathed in the smell of them as they crowded close, racing across an open field. The wolfdogs bayed and his voice joined in their chorus.

A horse knocked his shoulder and sent him tumbling. He saw its rider outlined against the stars, broad brimmed hat, one eye gleaming in the dark.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/28806674@N08/44277815400/in/photostream/)

He rolled to his feet and the ground was hard and frost kissed under his hands, his paws, as he ran, joy and hunger pulsing through his veins. The night was brighter, its secrets laid out in the scents of earth and grass, rabbits cowering in the brush and birds huddled in bushes and the pack around him, brothers in their search.

Something broke from cover and leapt, large and fast and the pack howled its joy. The horns blew shrill and wild. The answering cries of the riders were beautiful and terrible and so tragic his pounding heart felt as if it would break.

The prey bounded before them, thin legs blurring, horned head raised high, and eyes shining bright as the hidden moon.

They coursed over fallow fields and through forest and up the ridge of a pine clothed mountain. Higher and higher till the fog was cloud and their rushing passage shredded it into spirals of white against the blazing stars. The stag, horned man, charcoal etched and burning, flew from mountain top to valley in tremendous leaps, clearing rivers and sleeping towns and once dashing over tossing waves on an ice shrouded shore.

Yet closer came the panting jaws, the trampling hooves, the glinting spears. The hungry, howling horde at his heels as he ran for his life, his heart bursting in joyous terror.

A flash of teeth, the slash of a knife sharp hoof, and the pack was circling. Darting in to snap and dancing back to avoid a swipe of polished antler. His leg torn and bleeding and the taste of blood in his mouth as he spins and circles, hunter and prey till the riders advance. Beautiful merciless and laughing. The pack slinks back and he is alone again. Alone to face the raised spear, the savage blow. He throws his head up and laughs, defiant, more alive in the moment of his death then he has ever been in all his days of mortal life.

The spear flashes lightning swift and thunder booms across the sky. The strike is ice and fire and it rips through his body, stabs into his soul, pain so intense it bleeds into pleasure, a lover’s brutal thrust. He screams and falls and the pack is upon him. Tearing him open, till the deer hide is ripped from his burning, aching limbs, peeled from his heaving chest. The leader of the hunt grasps his antlers and they are torn from his head in one terrible wrench.

He lies bleeding, dying on the frozen ground as the wind ebbs and the hunt drifts away, shadows fading into the gathering mist. Surrounded by the bright darkness he is unheeding of time. Hours or days or years pass in the embrace of cold and frost and fog. When the black dog approaches with the icy tinkle of fairy bells he knows his time is over.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/28806674@N08/45182435025/in/photostream/)

Instead of pulling his soul from his dying flesh, it licks a warm wet tongue across his cheek and gives a rumbling woof that has nothing to do with wind or night. When a creature of brush and earth and trees with hair of fire kneels bedside him and holds a cup of Sygin’s black and bitter tears to his lips, it takes a moment for his wandering mind to grasp it’s a hunter in camouflage and blaze orange cap who is giving him coffee.

The warm drink conversely brings on shivering and the man and his companions help him back to their truck. The morning fog is rapidly burning off when he is driven the long miles back to his car. He spins a tale of stopping to stretch his legs and getting lost in the darken woods. His cuts and bruises and missing shoe a results of briers and mud and an encounter with a broken fence. The hunters laugh to themselves at a man who can get lost in plowed fields and calls hedgerows a wood, but they are eager to return to their hunt and take him at his word.

At home he washes the mud and blood from his body and smiles to think how briers can leave a wound so like the jaws of a huge dog on his leg, and how a broken bit of fencing can mark his chest like a half healed burn over his heart. There is no explanation for the brine that stiffens his pants cuffs. He falls into bed and sleeps the day and following night through.

When he wakes there are libations to be poured out and offerings to be made, but after all he has been through, they seem a small enough gift.

On the third day after his ordeal, as the aches settle into his muscles, and the cuts are an itching nuisance, he realizes how lucky he was. It was insane to tempt fate as he did. Never again he vows, as he maps out a training program.

The new running shoes are on order, as are a pair of thick leather motorcycle gauntlets. Heavy lace up boots and canvas coveralls are on the to-buy list. A GPS tracker and a friend on standby will have to be arranged as well. Depending on passing hunters to find him a second time would be foolish.

He’ll have to research gifts, something valuable and clever and given from the heart. It would not do to offend his hosts by showing up empty handed. That would be a poor way to show his gratitude. Yes, he smiled in anticipation. Next year he would be better prepared.

**Author's Note:**

> A modern interpretation of the Wild Hunt myth. Known by many different names I chose Odin's Hunt.


End file.
